The humanitarian impacts of economic sanctions on Burundi

population, and a set <strong>of</strong> recommendations. It also includes a
helpful Chronology <strong>of</strong> Sanctions (Appendix I). We believe readers
will find the study interesting for a number <strong>of</strong> reasons.
First, the <strong>sanctions</strong> against Burundi were undertaken at the
initiative <strong>of</strong> and managed by the governments <strong>of</strong> the region.
Although they were among a series <strong>of</strong> measures supported by the
UN Security Council, Lakhdar Bahimi, UN under-secretarygeneral
for the Secretary General’s Preventive and Peacemaking
Efforts, observed they were applied “neither by the Security
Council, as had been the case with Iraq and Yugoslavia, nor by the
established Organization <strong>of</strong> African Unity (OAU) as the prominent
regional organization, as had been the case with <strong>sanctions</strong> against
Haiti by the Organization <strong>of</strong> American States (OAS) that were later
endorsed by the United Nations.” 2 <strong>The</strong> effectiveness <strong>of</strong> such
measures in their own terms, as well as their relationship to similar
measures with a more direct UN connection, bear review.
Second, the <strong>sanctions</strong>, initially imposed without exemptions
for <strong>humanitarian</strong> supplies, affected not only the health and welfare
<strong>of</strong> civilians in Burundi but also the work <strong>of</strong> international <strong>humanitarian</strong>
organizations. <strong>The</strong> evolution <strong>of</strong> <strong>humanitarian</strong> exemptions
and the advocacy role played by the organizations in pressing for
such measures are both <strong>of</strong> interest well beyond Burundi.
Third, the special circumstances <strong>of</strong> Burundi, a landlocked
country with more than 90 percent <strong>of</strong> its population engaged in
subsistence agriculture and functioning largely outside <strong>of</strong> the
country’s formal economy, raise interesting analytical issues about
the results <strong>of</strong> <strong>sanctions</strong> in what appears to be a “best-case” setting.
Finally, when <strong>sanctions</strong> were imposed Burundi was a country
already in severe <strong>humanitarian</strong> crisis. <strong>The</strong> question thus arises <strong>of</strong>
the appropriateness <strong>of</strong> <strong>economic</strong> coercion, however impeccable its
political objectives. Is there a threshold <strong>of</strong> human suffering, our
consultants ask, beyond which <strong>sanctions</strong> should no longer be
imposed?
We note at the outset that Drs. Hoskins and Nutt encountered
several serious methodological problems. First was that <strong>of</strong> identifying
the role played by <strong>economic</strong> <strong>sanctions</strong> in producing <strong>humanitarian</strong>
hardship, on the one hand, and in promoting the desired
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